File:Birds of Great Britain and Ireland (1907) (14568575490).jpg

Identifier: birdsofgreatbrit02butl (find matches)
Title: Birds of Great Britain and Ireland
Year: 1907 (1900s)
Authors: Butler, Arthur Gardiner, 1844-1925 Grld, H. (Henrik), 1858-1940 Frohawk, Frederick William, 1861-1946
Subjects: Passeriformes -- Great Britain Passeriformes -- Ireland Birds -- Great Britain Birds -- Ireland
Publisher: Hull London : Brumby & Clarke
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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- rarely perchon trees; and when they do, they select the thicker branches. They do notwash, but dust themselves after the manner of Sparrows or Gallinaceous birds.Their food consists of spiders, centipedes, insects, larvae, and seeds or grain. Larks are powerful flyers, their wings being large and pointed; the wingsof the males are also as a rule stronger and more elongated than those of thefemales, doubtless to enable them to maintain their soaring hovering flight whensinging: as a natural result of this increase of wing-power the sternum is some-what more prominent, giving greater fulness to the chest. By these charactersthe bird-catchers are enabled to tell the sex of Larks directly they grasp them,the male being, in their own words, a handful. Colonel Charles Bingham tells me that the sex of a Lark can always be toldby the length of the hind claw, which is distinctly longer in the males than inthe females. ■X \
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-^ O ir - ^CO The Sky-Lark 183 Practically the Aluudida constitute an Old World fainih, one species onlyoccurring in North America, whilst, as Jerdon observes, They are very sparinglyrepresented in j\Iala3-ana and Australia. Familx- ALAUDID.E. The Sky-Lark. Alauda iDVCiisis, LiNN. FOUND during the summer months throughout the whole of Europe; nestingin Scandinavia as far north as lat. 70°, whilst in North Africa it breedssparingly as far south as the slopes of the Atlas Mountains, and in theeast, in Russia and Siberia, and at high elevations in Japan, the valley of theAmoor, South-east IMongolia, Turkestan and Persia. In winter it visits China,North-west India, Afghanistan, Persia, Asia Minor, Palestine and Egypt. It hasbeen met with at Madeira, and is reputed to have occurred on Greenland. It hasalso been introduced into the United States,* New Zealand and Australia. Throughout Great Britain and Ireland, the Sky-Lark is widely distributed,abundant, and \^exce

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